Tag Archives: D!va

Post navigation

Featuring so many beautiful items I’ve collected from previous events the past few months particularly from Death Row Designs and Fancy Decor but also inspired by Birdy and Scarlet Creative‘s additions from the current round of The Arcade… I give you the music parlour!

What I’m wearing can all be found at this month’s The Liaison Collaborative. Luxuria brings out my inner starlet in her gorgeous lingerie this month, perfect with Earthstones indulgent jewelry and kitten heels by Baiastice!

Enjoy the grandness of Second Life where you can live in the lap of luxury for a fraction of the price 😉 !

This was one of those photos that was supposed to get done weeks ago and got put off a bit to meet other deadlines but instead of skipping it altogether I really wanted to make it happen.. better late than never. It was about time to do something a little sexy and feminine…One by one I had collected each piece and once I found this lovely daybed from Scarlet Creative, which is out now at The Liaison Collaborative, I knew it was meant to be. The picture just came together on it’s own. A perfect little vintage hideaway… welcome to my (not so) Secret Budoir!

Goodbye fall…. Winter is coming! I am always awed how timely Ms. Strawberry Singh is with her Monday Memes and I usually wish to participate if only I could fit it into my already crazy schedule… but the truth is, I can barely keep up. We’ll just say that this time I got lucky and it coincided with this planned winter pic. 😀

And thanks to The Arcade opening up on December 1st, there are PLENTY of winter themed goodies up for gacha. It’s open all month, so you have lots of time to get on over there and spend those lindens. I’ll be showing off all my favorite finds from there the rest of this month as well.

Now.. onto the questions *ahem*:

What is the December/Winter season like where you live? – I’m on the East Coast of the US just outside of Washington DC so winter can go either way really. The past few years it’s been unusually warm and only snowed/flurried once or twice and never lasted more than a day. It can often be in the 30s/40s Farenheit temperature-wise but snow is a rare occurrence. When it flurries, the city shuts down. No.. seriously. It does. And I laugh. Cuz I’m from Michigan :D.

When you think of winter, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? – Snow of course. And Michigan winters have lots of snow. I was born in a snowstorm so it’s in my blood I think. After snow, I think of fireplaces and hot cocoa. Those three things really go together, always.

Have you ever played any extreme winter sports? – Again, not really extreme, but I had tried downhill skiing unsuccessfully as a kid (that means I didn’t make it down the hill standing). Cross-country was always a winner. I loved being in the cold and working up a sweat. Depending on the hill, sledding could be considered extreme… I’ll just leave it at that.

What do you like most about this season? – What’s not to love?? Christmas and my birthday are both in winter! I do love the cool air, seeing my breath, the tingly feeling when coming in from outside and my nose is like ice, putting my cold hands around a hot cup of cocoa, and watching the snowflakes falling covering everything in a blanket of white, really it’s quite beautiful.

Do you celebrate Christmas, Hannukkah, Kwanzaa or another holiday during this time of year? – Yes, I celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday as well as Advent. Christmas was always a big deal, and full of lots of special family traditions, and those are things I’m not carrying down to my own kids… hoping they’ll remember it as fondly as I always did.

Thanks Berry for another fun meme.. Glad I got to be a part of it this time!

Have you heard about Shoetopia yet? Chances are, if you haven’t, you’ve been living under a rock the past month, if not year. This Shoe Fair has gotten people kicking their heels up and giddy over gorgeous new shoes for the last year really, since it’s preparation began. And I can say from all that I’ve seen, you shall not be disappointed.Shoetopia, though long awaited, finally opens today at noon SLT!! And will continue through November 30th, giving you 14 days of unadulterated shoe-shopping bliss. So make room in your SL closets, you are going to be in heaven when you see all the beauteous boots, heels, pumps, stilettos, strappy sandals, thigh highs, mules, flats, sneakers, and so much more from all your favorite designers and maybe even a few you’ve never heard of before!

And if tantalizing you with the thought of sweet treats for your feets isn’t enough, let me remind you that Shoetopia has chosen to benefit SOLES4SOULS, a charity that is currently working emergency responders to provide relief to the victims of the typhoon in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. You will find that many designers will have items out exclusively for this event with all or some proceeds being donated to SOLES4SOULS.

Well it seems as though I’m going to attempt to kill many birds with one stone here. (Sorry little birdies!) I decided to use these photo(s) as a good example for Strawberry Singh’s Windlight Challenge. Though it may not be thee most creative of all windlights I use. I’ll explain why more later and maybe it still is of help to ‘someone’ out there. I’m also showcasing some items from The ARCADE, FaMESHed, and the upcoming Fifty Linden Fridays. I’m a busy girl.. gotta keep it movin.

So without further ado… here’s the Q&A:

Do you use windlight while taking pictures? If not, why not? Yes! I definitely do. I honestly would be lost without them. And have been. On occasion when updating my viewer didn’t take care to save my created Windlights and lost them when doing a clean install. I might’ve cried that day. So now I’m very careful as I rely on them for all my photos. I will share that my discovery of Windlight settings and subsequent falling in love was after coming across Elysium Eilde’s photography. Her vibrant and rich colors to her photos inspired me to get creative with my own.

When taking a closeup snapshot for a profile picture, which windlight preset do you use most often? I don’t really have a designated go-to windlight that i use for profile pictures. Most of the time, even when doing closeups in world, I will use whatever setting I’m using for a full body photo and just take care to adjust the time of day and sun angle to not cast too many shadows on the face that wash out the skin. If I’m shooting a photo in my makeshift studio then I select one of my pre-made Studio WLs that are probably tweaked from some of the default ones that came with the Firestorm viewer. (I’ve included some of those below).

Which windlight presets do you use for full body portraits? Again, I really do customize most every single one. It completely depends on the mood of the photo and the colors in the elements of the photo. Sometimes I really like to play up the sky coloring and make it something unusual and unexpected. Some examples of that are HERE and HERE and um… HERE too. 🙂

If you do landscape photography, which windlights do you use for that most often? I rarely do landscape photography, but as I mentioned before, playing with the coloring of the sky can really create a dramatic backdrop for any photo. If possible I love to use sunset, or sunrise windlights to set a mood when doing landscape pictures. I will agree Annan Adored’s windlight settings are very dramatic. And as Berry mentioned, sometimes just using the default sim windlight is enough. Usually the person that created the environment, chooses a windlight to set the tone for the sim and enjoying it in its original state is great.

Do you have any tricks or tips that you could share for using Windlight effectively? My tip is play with all the buttons. Definitely the sun/moon position and angle and for me the sun brightness and ambient lighting are the most commonly modified. Although lately, I have been working on playing with the density and haze horizon settings more to give that far off faded look to things in the distance. I’ve also found that making sure to lock the clouds helps avoid certain graphics glitches when shooting photos with shadows and ambient occlusion on. You can also adjust the color of the clouds and really give your photos a very different two-toned look in the sky. And lastly, don’t just play with the sky settings…. if you’re shooting over where there is water, don’t forget to take that into consideration as well. Like my above photo, having reflection in the water adds a lot of realism to photography in Second Life.

Have you created any windlights that you would be willing to share with us? I do. And I’ve uploaded several of them HERE for you to try out, including the “Midday Hazy Blue” sky and “Glassy with Waves” water settings I used for the photos in this post. Please keep in mind though that this picture was post-processed and I did add a lot of contrast and brightness as well as de-saturated it some to get the final look.

I hope that I was able to give a little more insight into how I achieve the look in some of my photos, and hopefully that is useful to some of you as you experiment. I am so very glad to have access to so many wonderful windlights built into the Firestorm viewer that they really do give a great base to start from and to the many other photographers who have so graciously shared their custom settings for us to try too. 😀

Although I was away from SL, Plurk and blogging for the past week and a half while family was in town visiting, I am glad I didn’t miss the chance to get back and blog some of these items I had picked up at the Love Donna Flora! Event in support of Squinternet Larnia. The event is still going on until August 11th and some of the items are exclusive to this event so they won’t be sold in stores after that time. So I do encourage you, if you haven’t been over to the sim… stop in to check it out! I know what you’re thinking, do you reaaaaallly need more stuff?? (Yes of course you do, if I have to have an SL closet bursting at the seams, so do you!) But seriously, even if you’re not interested in shopping the event itself, perhaps you’d consider just monetarily helping support a fellow SLer, designer/creator who, just like you, is a real person beyond the computer screen who is battling one of life’s biggest adversaries: cancer. Every little contribution can help ease the financial burden she is facing in keeping her store afloat as well as trying to find alternative medicines in fighting this deadly disease.

To read more about Squinternet’s journey and see the amazing support of the SL community rallying for her, read the Love Donna Flora! blog HERE.

I chose the color purple for this blogpost because 1. the monkey was purple and how could I not do a post including him and his cuteness and 2. the Love Donna Flora logo itself was purple and I felt that was somewhat symbolic. Purple is a color often associated with royalty and really, when it comes to all things vintage in SL, Donna Flora IS the queen. For those who are of a spiritual nature, the color purple is also synonymous with suffering and patient endurance. Considering the scope of what Ms. Larnia is going through in her life, that too seems quite appropriate. And lastly, it is also a color that signifies honor and victory and sacrifice (i.e. the Purple Heart). May it also be true for Ms. Larnia that though this journey is full of sacrifice, I pray she comes out a winner in her own battle. And I hope she feels the love and support of all of us cheering her on along the way.

**Please note I have stopped including links to the individual stores listed, due to time constraints. Please feel free to contact me if you have any trouble locating a particular store that I have listed in the style credits.

Playing catch up as usual… I have been juggling too many projects at once to get things out as timely as I would’ve liked to. I keep thinking it will get easier, but maybe I should just stop being so hard on myself. The work will always be there. I just have to accept that it’s ok that I’m not perfect all the time. I know, I can hear the audible gasp, “What??! Trin’s not perfect?” I’m afraid to tell you folks, the truth is out. 😛

I found this adorable outfit at Summerfest a couple weeks ago, paired it with some cute mary janes, hair and teddybear backpack I found at Collabor88 (June). Then enter in the Belleza FLF skin from last week that was a perfect match. But it was oOo Studios poses “Katrina” for FLF today that really spurred me on to get it blogged finally. The poses have a youthful, care-free feel about them, making this look the ideal choice for them.

The scene featuring Barneworth Anubis’s new Boardwalk building kit is from the last round of the Garden that ended this past week, and as much as I wanted to buy everything in the place (cuz omgggg the cuteness!), I had no time to build myself a beach this past month. It’s on my (ever-growing) to-do list. But no worries, even though I’m blogging all these events that have since ended, I’ll make sure you know where to find all these great items at the end of this post.

Hope you all are having a fun-filled summer, full of sweet treats & sunny days! 😀

I rarely have the time to enter contests between RL and my work in SL. However, I think the contest was just an excuse for me, really. I had been working so hard getting pics ready for Pose Fair that I didn’t get a chance to get over to the Neva River sim until it’s final days. It felt rushed sadly, as I explored the beauty that Neva Crystall and Alex Bader (of Skye Studio) had created knowing 2 days would never be enough. But I did insist on seeing it all, taking in every detail. I only wished I had been able to take more photos. It’s such an inspiring place. Green and lush, rural and earthy this time vs. the more deserted paradise Neva brought to us the last time she opened her sim. I can’t imagine the plethora of ideas that woman must have in her brain!

So with the clock ticking, I found myself in the yard near the little farmhouse, and it was obvious what was happening….

Waking up early, with a bit of an ominous sky, the sun breaking through the clouds blinding my tired eyes. He still sleeps. The sound of the chickens clucking, birds chirping doesn’t rouse him… I throw on my sweater and boots as I go on to fetch our breakfast. Fresh eggs gifted from our hens, how thoughtful of them. Surely the warm smells from the kitchen will tickle his nose and bring him to me soon. This is morning on Neva River.

Disclaimer

Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended. This site is not owned or operated by Second Life or Linden Lab.